The Burritos’ seminal 1969 debut album, The Gilded Palace Of Sin, continues to cast such a long shadow over country-rock that it’s easy to forget the group has been around in one form or another ever since. The only original member in the current Burritos lineup is pedal steel player “Sneeky” Pete Kleinow, but fiddler/singer [...]

Here in Nashville, I find myself in the grip of a persistent hope that one day I’ll walk into an unknown bar and there, onstage, will be an unknown singer swinging through standards and songs that sound like standards except somebody on the bandstand wrote ‘em. Oh, and the singer in this discovery myth has [...]

This is how long it has taken singer, guitarist and songwriter Scott McCaughey to get within spitting distance of a major-label record deal: When his original band the Young Fresh Fellows made their LP debut in 1984 with The Fabulous Sounds Of The Pacific Northwest, that title was an impish nod to the Upper Left [...]

Few bands out there these days can comfortably move between the various genres of pop music and make it all come out sounding listenable. In fact, I can only think of three: NRBQ, the Young Fresh Fellows, and the Skeletons. Like the Q and the Fellows, The Skeletons are at ease whacking out country, funk, [...]

Bob Woodruff’s 1994 debut album, Dreams & Saturday Nights, was one of the finest country albums of the ’90s. With songs such as “The Year We Tried To Kill The Pain”, “Poisoned At The Well” and “You Can’t Win”, Woodruff showed himself to be a master of the well-crafted story-song and the honky-tonk lament. But [...]

Jeff Rymes and Randy Weeks, a.k.a. The Lonesome Strangers, have been rustling up comparisons to the Everly Brothers, and for good reason. The duo’s harmonies are closer than a straight-edged shave, and the country-pop tunes on their latest release, Land Of Opportunity, master the fine art of telling sad stories while leaving listeners humming happily.
Pete [...]

It is not easy to straddle musical fences the way Big Sandy & His Fly-Rite Boys do. They may be retro down to the 1949 bus they tour the country in, but they bring western swing, hillbilly music and roots-rock raging into the last days of the 20th century.
Feelin’ Kinda Lucky is Big Sandy’s third [...]

Bill Frisell is a guitar genius. Any of his multitude of collaborators — from John Zorn and Arto Lindsay to Elvis Costello and Marianne Faithfull — can attest to that. What’s becoming increasingly clear, though, is that he is also a brilliant composer. A bona fide American original, Frisell has found kindred spirits in the [...]